Ms. Meeker and I must be reading a different budget (or reading the same budget very differently). Most of the spending budget and budgetary issues fall squarel

Ms. Meeker and I must be reading a different budget (or reading the same budget very differently). Most of the spending budget and budgetary issues fall squarely in the lap of military spending -- which has consistently been the biggest-ticket item for many decades. A full 20% of federal healthcare related spending goes towards veteran benefits. That's one dollar in five. This is military spending that used to be counted under the DoD budget, but now creates the false appearance that non-military aspects of government are to blame for much of the increased costs. We see ridiculous slides like this, which rank health care for injured soldiers, military pensions and so on as "entitlements" rather than "defense." Other items excluded from the defense/military "20%" figure include (next paragraph quoted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States#Other_defense-related_expenditures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_S... ): "Nuclear weapons research, maintenance, cleanup, and production, which is in the Department of Energy budget, Veterans Affairs, the Treasury Department's payments in pensions to military retirees and widows and their families, interest on debt incurred in past wars, or State Department financing of foreign arms sales and militarily-related development assistance. Neither does it include defense spending that is not military in nature, such as the Department of Homeland Security, counter-terrorism spending by the FBI, and intelligence-gathering spending by NASA." I would suggest that military spending is out of control, has been out of control for a very, very long time. An honest appraisal of federal military expenditures will place it at somewhere near 50% of the entire federal budget.